Globalizing adoption: Linking children and adoptive parents

Millions of unwanted children around the world languish either in foster homes or "foster warehouses"—bleak government-run institutions where they are ignored by an indifferent staff. Many who survive become street children, enduring a jungle-like existence in the major cities of developing nations. An estimated 40 million children live this kind of life in Latin America alone.

Meanwhile, there are millions of childless people in the world who would love to adopt a child. Why, then, are so many children abandoned? Why are orphaned children not matched up with people who want to adopt them?

International law has moved strongly toward saying that each child has a right to grow up in a family. The international legal community has realized that a child must be nurtured and cared for if it is to grow up to be a responsible member of society. As Mercedes Rosario de Martínez, the founder of Colombia's Foundation for the Adoption of Abandoned Children, put it, "We don't give a child to a family; we give a family to a child."